


no stab the soul can kill

by SheWhoWalksUnseen



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic Asexual Zari Tomaz, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Blink and you miss it mention of Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe, Episode: s03e04 Phone Home, Gen, Mention of future Ray Palmer/Nora Darhk, Mention of future Wally West/Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Panic Attacks, Platonic Soulmates, Scars, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, This seems like a lot of tags but I'm trying to cover everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-24 13:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21100397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheWhoWalksUnseen/pseuds/SheWhoWalksUnseen
Summary: By logical conclusions, according to ten-year-old Zari Tomaz, soulmates were, and forever would be, bullshit.The Legends wholeheartedly and emphatically disagreed.





	no stab the soul can kill

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever headcanon for Zari Tomaz even before I managed to watch S3, thanks to word of mouth, convinced me she was aromantic asexual. I'm not sure why or how, but something about it just felt right, and while that's shifted over time due to both me finally watching the show and shipping her with various characters, I've always wondered what would have happened if she _was_ aroace and how that would've been explored. So when I saw the "trope inversion" prompt for the Aspec Fandom Fest, I knew using soulmates was the way I wanted to finally do my girl justice.
> 
> Also, I did indeed map out every soulmark and who it belonged to (as of canon at this point and time, what with Season 5 on the horizon), so if that needs explanation, I'll gladly explain each one if you ask. Enjoy.
> 
> Title comes from Sir Walter Ralegh's poem "The Lie".
> 
> Thanks go to the lovely _SophiaCatherine_ for beta-ing this for me.

She didn’t remember a lot about her early childhood but one thing she could recall with crystal clarity was the look on her mother’s face when she woke her for school one morning, about two months before Behrad was born.

Her mother had come into her bedroom, the sound of the door opening jolting her from a lovely dream that became hazy mere moments after it ended, and Zari grumbled before pulling the pillow over her head. She remembered her mother fighting a laugh as she drew nearer, tugging at the pillow when Zari refused to open her eyes or release it.

“You have school, Zari. We can’t be late.”

“Five more minutes,” she whined and twisted and turned under the cotton pillow as her mother pulled harder. Her small hands were too weak against her mother’s own and the sheets by her chest slipped as she made grabby hands toward the pillow, her sleeves falling to her elbows. She pouted up at her mother when she made no move to return the stolen pillow. “I don’t want to go to school.”

Her mother said nothing, staring down at her arms and then face, and Zari remembered asking what was wrong when the silence persisted, growing uneasy by how ashen her mother was. She’d even sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she reached out to her, only for her mother’s gaze to dart back down to her arms for some reason.

The incident seemed mostly unremarkable, due to how quickly her mother regained her composure, the question on her lips vanishing as she pursed them into a thin smile and nudged Zari out of bed with a laugh. And, to be fair, ten-year-old Zari was too young to think anything of it even though the image of her mother’s momentary stricken, open-mouthed stare nagged at the back of her mind.

Then she learned about soulmates in school - really, truly, _ properly _ got a lesson beyond the wild dancing around the topic she’d been subjected to from teachers and parents and classmates who didn’t know any better after _ years _ of confusion - and Zari began to actually think about that look.

Well, more like she thought about the marks littering her arms that she’d assumed were scars, faint yet _ new_, glistening stark white against her skin for the last few months.

Zari knew the basics of soulmates: not everyone had one, and if they did, they were usually grouped in pairs. The marks came in the form of scars, no matter how little or big the injury, and while this wasn’t a clear indicator as to who your soulmate was at first glance, mates “found” each other pretty fast once they met. The marks could show up at any age, at any time, and there was nothing wrong with never finding your mate or mates. At least, that was what the polite teacher said when Katie Adams asked what would happen if they _ never _met a soulmate.

Society tended to disagree, if you believed in romantic notions and all the rom-coms and forbidden lovers tales about soulmates kept apart by drama even though they were obviously meant to be. Zari always gagged when they kissed at the end when her parents weren’t looking.

Which was why her own marks, now that she recognized them for what they were, confused her more.

For one, they were _ everywhere_. Most were tattooed on her arms and elbows, a couple on fingers where paper cuts must have been deep enough to warrant a scar, and the harder she stared at her face, the more she saw peeking back at her on her upper lip, on her forehead near her hairline, on her collarbone stretching toward her neck. Her scars seemed endless, wrapping her little body up in a _ klutz! my soulmate’s a klutz! _package.

She wouldn’t have minded the number of scars under normal circumstances. This just proved she _ had _ one.

But this also proved, Zari realized as she touched the thick slash on her collarbone with shaky hands, that she had _ more _ than one.

Granted, if you weren’t paying attention, you couldn’t tell the difference, but because of all the squinting and turning in the mirror to look at herself, Zari could see that the paper cuts were outlined in a faint blue, almost the same color as the veins on her hand. The collarbone slash, however, was a furious red that made her chest look sunburned at first glance. Likewise, the scars across her arms and face were all scattered with different colors too, ranging from blue to red to purple to black until she was certain some were shades she’d never heard of before. Unless someone was standing next to her, from a distance the array of colors might have been invisible. It took her almost half an hour to count each color and make a list in her head, and then on an actual piece of paper because she kept losing track of which one she’d already counted.

_ Fourteen_. She nodded to herself and glanced back at the mirror, her eyes tracing each prominent scar and its outline with a lurch in her gut she didn’t like. There were _ fourteen _ scars which meant fourteen _ soulmates_, not including the fact that she might have more whose scars she hadn’t found yet or who simply weren’t as clumsy as the others.

_ Fourteen. _

Zari might have dry heaved over the sink for a couple minutes, pulling her hair back and shutting her eyes as she tried to breathe, in and out, just like her mother always told her.

Fourteen was impossible. Nobody she knew had more than three, _ maybe _ four. And even then, the kids in her class either laughed at the very idea of more or thought of it as a game, like they were collecting soulmates through their scars.

Zari didn’t want a collection. She didn’t want _ fourteen _ soulmates. Surely that was too much.

Why couldn’t she just have her parents and her baby brother? Why weren’t _ they _ her soulmates instead? She’d rather have them than over a dozen strangers she’d have to fall in love with - and how was she supposed to marry them anyway? How were they supposed to kiss (she wrinkled her nose trying to picture all those mouths coming at her) or sleep in the same bed like her parents did?

Well. It would make cuddling easier if they tried to fit. And she could play more games with fourteen friends.

But they weren’t _ friends_, Zari reminded herself and her gut twisted. They were _ soulmates_. All of them.

The universe must have made a mistake. There had to be some kind of rule against this, something had gone wrong _ somewhere_, and now there was a mistake in the form of scars all over Zari’s body. It was impossible and silly and ridiculous and frankly, there would be no way to tell which soulmate was which if she ever _ did _ supposedly meet them.

She breathed a little easier, nodding at the mirror as wide eyes stared back at her. Yeah. Yeah, it had to be a mistake. An accident.

Thus, by logical conclusions, according to ten-year-old Zari Tomaz, soulmates were, and forever would be, bullshit.

***

The Legends wholeheartedly and emphatically disagreed.

She hadn’t even thought to bring up the topic with the team (it wasn’t like she was staying long, they were just a means to figure out a way to save her family and move on, that was it) but less than four days after she joined their ragtag crew for the time being, she walked into the kitchen and found Jax showing off his biceps to the others, grinning big and proud from his seat at the table.

No, not his biceps, she corrected herself as she walked closer, but a new scar. It was about as long as her index finger and tinged with a golden yellow hue around the corners, jagged and bright against his skin. It looked like someone had taken a knife and tried to spell something on their arm.

“Haven’t had one in a while,” Jax was saying, still beaming as Nate pulled his arm closer to his face so he could see it better. “I almost thought they’d disappeared. Sometimes they fade too, so I wanted to make sure _ someone _ saw it.”

“Well,” Nate said, leaning back in his chair after a moment of scrutinizing the scar, “you’re not crazy. It’s definitely there.”

“Looks nasty.” Ray frowned, concern flashing across his face. “Do you think they’re okay?”

“Oh, sure! They’ve gotten hurt before, I’m sure it’s nothing.” Jax’s smile dimmed a little, though, as if he hadn’t considered the possibility until now.

“They’re probably fine.” Sara gave Ray a look, one of those _ I’m the captain and I’m putting my foot down so no one gets hurt _ stares that made Ray grimace. “Congrats, Jax.”

Zari couldn’t help but snort as she moved toward the fridge, grateful that the doughnuts she’d stashed hours ago had remained intact and uneaten. Fighting Mick Rory when she was running on five hours of sleep after running simulations all night wasn’t a smart idea, but knowing hungry Zari, she wouldn’t give a shit. “Why are you congratulating him? It’s just a scar. He’s probably got a ton of them.”

“It’s his soulmate, Z.” Zari tried not to pause with her hand halfway to the doughnuts, but something about the careful tone Ray was suddenly using made her want to scream. “Wait, do they not have soulmates in the future? Or has that concept died down with the lack of culture and - ”

“I know what a soulmate is,” Zari snapped, grabbing her doughnut plate and glaring at Ray. “We just - They’re just not real, okay?”

The whole room went quiet for a moment and she hated how her chest tightened at the sight of every Legend staring back at her. Even Mick looked slightly perturbed by her comment. Or maybe he was intrigued by the sharp change in conversation, who knew.

“I think I would know if my soulmate wasn’t real,” Jax said slowly in a quiet voice.

“I didn’t…” Zari shut her eyes and huffed. “That’s not what I meant. The concept is flawed and half the time people never meet their soulmates in the end, which disproves all of those epic romances you see in films and books - I mean, there really isn’t anything super romantic about getting scarred by your soulmate twenty-four-seven, if you think about it. You’re just getting hurt while they are, and quite frankly, I’d be more concerned for whoever’s causing those scars in the first place than kissing them the moment you realize who they are.”

“That’s why they’re special, though,” Amaya cut in, and now _she_ was acting all quiet and funny about the conversation and Zari somehow hated _that_ even more. “You don’t have to know who they are. You know someone’s out there for you, waiting for you, ready to support you, and that’s enough.”

She had to laugh. “Supporting you? By giving you scars?”

“Z.” Sara’s tone turned sharp, a blatant warning.

“Look, I’m not saying you can’t look for your soulmate or be happy about it. But given how well the future, _ my _ future turns out with chances of finding soulmates at _ all _ \- ”

“Do you not have a soulmate?” Ray sounded less tentative and more melancholy, his eyes darting over the exposed skin of her hands, her neck, her face. It wasn’t a violating once-over by any means but something about the look, like he was almost concerned for _ her _ now, made her feel sick. Thank goodness for long sleeves and jeans, at the very least.

Zari just took her plate and left the room, listening to the silence that followed and the faint whispers in the aftermath of _ that _ the whole way to her room. She nearly broke the plate with how white her knuckles were, hands clenched to the point of physical pain around the rim. The stupid, ornamental flowery design wrapping around the rim gazed up at her as she glared down at it, a mocking, shiny delight in the face of her irritation. 

She regretted letting Ray give Gideon the go to put little messages and designs on the plates like “Have a nice day!” He thought it’d be a fun experiment and she’d thought it would piss off Sara and make her laugh. Unfortunately, the latter had been put to the test, and Sara found them “adorable”, which instead made Zari want to groan and pull her hair out.

She threw the plate into the corner of the room the moment she was done with the doughnuts and asked Gideon to start up the last game she’d left off on, grabbing the controller and barely hearing the stoic reply. It took great effort not to glance down at the scars dotting her fingers and hands, and even _ more _ effort not to yank her flannel sleeves down over her hands so she wouldn’t have to look at them at all.

***

Zari did have to hand it to the Legends, honestly: they were a group of misfits from various points in time who fucked up missions more than the brief team she’d had back in her own time, but they were a _ persistent _ group of misfits. It was almost an admirable trait.

That is, it would’ve been admirable had it not been directed at her. Specifically, Zari’s “hatred” toward soulmates, as Nate put it when he tried to not-so-subtly corner her in the library while she was running simulations.

“I mean, I get the cynicism,” he said, spreading his hands when she glanced over at his sheepish expression, “I do. For the longest time, I thought soulmates and magic and time travel were bullshit.”

“Lemme guess. Your newfound love for history via this floating timeship changed all that.”

“Sort of?”

Zari shook her head and bit back a laugh. “Right. Well, sorry to disappoint,” and she turned back to the screen, watching Gideon’s numbers and calculations fly past faster than she could read them, “but I’m not super interested in hopping on the friendship train at the moment. And this isn’t me being cynical, I’m being _ practical_.”

_ “ _Uh huh.”

“Plus, time travel and magic totems don’t equal soulmates working out. The whole idea is... It’s not practical or realistic.”

Nate had gone quiet after that and Zari didn’t stick around to hear his counterargument, calling over her shoulder for Gideon to inform her of any updates before she made a hasty retreat.

And that had just been the _ first _ encounter with the Legends bringing up the subject in her presence and definitely not side-eyeing her the whole time. Really, did _ any _ of them actually believe they were being subtle?

Admittedly, they weren’t harassing her about it every time she turned the corner or ambushing her in her room or even starting a shouting match when she got particularly annoyed with the line of questioning. No, instead it was as if they were trying to wear her down with a gentle approach - blunt and to the point, but still gentle in their tones as they both gave her space and lingered near her.

Zari hated the phrase “kill them with kindness” but it was rather accurate in this case.

Not that it was working, obviously. No matter how many doe-eyed looks the others (i.e. Ray Palmer) gave her, she wasn’t going to suddenly be gung-ho about soulmates just because they wanted her to be. If she hadn’t met a single soulmate of hers since she was ten, there was a slim chance of soulmates being more than romanticized propaganda. Which sounded harsh, but hey, Zari’d seen harsher, brutaler things than people who were critical of soulmarks.

So she wasn’t particularly keen on listening to the Legends poke and prod at her for information or convince her she was just being silly.

Then Ray nearly disappeared before their eyes and next thing she knew, they were hurtling through space and time to the 1980’s to rescue Ray’s younger self from aliens and the FBI and bullies and everything in between. It was strange seeing and talking with younger Ray, especially when Ray insisted on playing knights and watching musicals with a baby alien. However, there was something comforting about watching him bop his head along to the music from his TV, enough so she found herself promising him they’d get Gumball back when he glanced up at her with tearful brown eyes later on. The way he tried to connect with the kids bullying him down the street and clung to Gumball before he let the Dominator queen take him away made her chest ache and she found herself folding her arms over her chest as if that small gesture could trap the uneasy churning inside her.

Still, when the chaos was all over and she found little Ray sniffling in his bedroom, Zari didn’t hesitate before giving him a smile, knocking their shoulders together as she let him cry on her arm. She really hoped the others wouldn’t ask about the damp stain.

“Sorry,” Ray whispered after a long moment, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He kept his gaze on the carpet. “I miss him.”

“You did the right thing,” Zari assured him, though the words felt heavy, recited, on her tongue. “I’m sure he won’t forget about you.”

Ray nodded. “He’s got a family,” he murmured. It almost sounded like he was trying to remind himself of that. “He needed to go home. Besides, Mom wouldn’t have let him stay.”

Her chest ached again. “It’s for the best. His mother missed him. Your family would miss you too if you were missing for so long.” _ Or dead_, she thought, recalling the article Gideon had shown them prior to the mission and how devastated the Palmers had looked.

“Yeah.” Ray tapped his fingers on the floor by Zari’s hand, his brow furrowing. She wasn’t sure if he was actually listening to what she said anymore. “You have a lot of scars.”

Zari froze, her breath caught in her throat. She’d forgotten how close they were sitting, where he was looking, _ what _ he’d be looking at.

Ray didn’t look up at her, still staring at her hand, his fingers stretching curiously toward hers as he tilted his head. “They’re pretty. I like them.”

The idea of laughing rose unbidden and she forced her tone to come off steady, unbothered. “Pretty?”

“Yeah. They’ve got all sorts of colors.” His fingertips brushed over hers, and she barely kept herself from jolting at the touch. She let him trace the scars in fascination, moving down her fingers, over her knuckles and toward the palm of her hand. He seemed oddly focused, biting his lower lip as he mapped the scars he could see. “I only have one color.”

“You got your scars already?”

“They’re black,” he said, not looking up or taking his hand away. “Sydney said they look weird, but I like them. They’re on my stomach.”

“Oh.” Zari tried not to think about how she bore black scars in a similar place, right above her navel.

“But yours are cool. You’ve got them everywhere.” He bit into his lip harder and Zari realized the tears were beginning to well up again in his eyes. “I wish I had a lot of soulmates. It’s like having forever friends.”

Zari laughed and the sound came out high and choked, her throat tightening as he glanced toward her with a familiar flash of worry she’d seen (and rolled her eyes at) often aboard the Waverider. “I don’t think they’re meant to be forever friends.”

“Well, you don’t have to kiss all of them. That’d be kinda hard.” Ray frowned. “Do you _ want _to kiss all of them?”

“No.” The word came out before she could stop it, and she blinked in surprise as little Ray just stared back at her. “No, I - I don’t.”

“Then they’re your friends!” He held up her hand in his and beamed for the first time since Gumball had been taken away by his mother. “And look, you’ve got so many of them! And lots of paper cuts, just like me.”

“Lots of…”

Ray raised his left hand next to hers and it was Zari’s turn to stare and stare at the faint reddened marks on and between his fingers, little cuts from turning a page too fast or scraping skin along paper the wrong way that matched her own baby blue soulmarks to a T.

She’d never stared at Ray’s hands before (which would’ve been creepy, in retrospect, so perhaps that was for the better). She’d never noticed his scars, never taken into account all those times he’d told Jax or Stein he’d accidentally cut himself while working in the lab and laughed it off with a _ it’s just a paper cut, I promise, I’m fine, I’ll be better soon! _

Zari wondered if younger Ray would mind if she threw up in his wastebasket by the door.

“We match!” His smile was blinding, white and brilliant as ever. “Now we’re going to be friends forever, see?” He hesitated when Zari didn’t say anything, that furrowing starting to return as he put her hand down gently. “If you want to, I mean.”

Zari sucked in a shaky breath and turned toward him so her knees brushed his smaller ones. She glanced down at their hands, at the telltale scars on Ray’s that hadn’t healed just yet and her own with dozens of baby blues glinting up at her in the light of the setting sun peeking through his bedroom window.

Had Ray ever noticed her scars on the Waverider? Had he seen them in the kitchen that day? Did he know? Granted, he seemed a tad oblivious at times, but he was smart and a lot more observant than she gave him credit for. She knew that better than anything now that she was staring at his child self, meeting wide, cautious eyes that contained a glimmer of hope deep in their depths.

Maybe…

Maybe it was time she listened to him.

Zari smiled and she didn’t bother to keep her voice from cracking as she said softly, “I want to.”

***

“Do all your missions go this poorly?” She didn’t have to look over to know who was sitting on the step beside her, watching the green pulse of the timestream flare past the windows. She nearly tucked her hands into her lap, the desire to hide them under the folds of her shirt devolving into a faint nagging panic in the back of her mind.

Ray grimaced. “No, no. There was this one time where we…” He paused and the corners of her mouth twitched. “No, actually, yes, they do.”

“Yeah, can't wait for the next one.” Zari raised an eyebrow when Ray glanced at her, and she met his gaze with her best challenging look. “Which means we should probably get to know each other.”

“Get to know each other? Like…” His eyes lit up. “Like my trust-building exercises?”

She snorted and shook her head. “Hell no. I, uh…” Her voice failed her for a moment and she cleared her throat. Her eyes fell upon his hands and while she couldn’t see the paper cuts Ray had born at eight years old, there were already new ones criss-crossing his fingers now. She didn’t have to look at her own to know they were a match. “I meant for this.” Zari nodded toward his hand. “The soulmate shit.”

Ray didn’t say anything for a moment. “I didn’t think you’d noticed.” His voice was unusually small, tentative, like he was trying not to wound her with his words.

“How long have you known?”

“Since a couple days after you came to stay on the Waverider. But I didn’t have yours, so I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to say anything.”

She hadn’t even thought about what color her marks might be, not to mention whether Ray - or any of her soulmates, for that matter - bore hers in turn. Somehow the idea wasn’t as upsetting as she feared.

“I didn’t see it until I talked with little you today.” Zari shrugged. “He was a lot smarter about it than I was.”

“You’re plenty smart,” Ray countered. “And I know you don’t like soulmates but - ”

“I don’t like them because you’re not the only one I have.”

She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, but once she saw the look on his face she knew there was no taking her words back. She gave in to the urge to hide her hands this time, wringing them in her lap as she held Ray’s gaze with a smile she hoped wasn’t tinged with bitterness. Knowing Ray, she probably didn’t succeed.

“I remember us talking,” he said, hesitant and slow, though he looked less afraid of treating her like something fragile. “In my room. You said… Well, _ I _said… You had a lot of colors.”

“Fourteen.” Zari watched his lips part in an O, his eyes wide. “I have fourteen, that I know of. And you’re the first one I’ve met. So congrats, Sir Galahad.”

Ray ran a hand through his hair and a stunned laugh escaped him. “I - you’re welcome? But how - _ fourteen_?”

“And whoever yours is,” Zari said, and she couldn’t stop her voice from trembling, just a little, “that has those blacks marks? They’re probably mine too. I - I have the scars on my stomach.”

“Wow. I… Wow.” Ray was still gaping at her. “Forgive me for - Forgive me for asking but are all of them…? Are they…?” He floundered with his words, his jaw working as he tried to phrase his question just right and she thought she understood.

“_No_, I don’t have a crush on you. Or whoever these people are.”

His cheeks burned and he looked away. “Right, no, I just wanted to make sure. That’d be awkward.”

“I wouldn’t have brought it up if I did,” Zari admitted. Though, she’d never had a crush before so she wasn’t sure if she would have hidden it at all.

“That doesn’t explain why you have so many, then. Are they all platonic?”

“I hope so.” Ray’s eyes locked on hers again and she sighed. “I’m - I don’t know if the terms have changed in the past or whatever, but I… I’m aromantic. And asexual.”

“Oh.” Ray didn’t even blink. “That makes more sense.”

Her gut twisted and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “It does?”

“I mean… It explains why you were so cynical about having so many. Having more than one, though I obviously don’t speak from experience, is likely scary.”

“It…” She swallowed hard. The memory of looking herself over in the bathroom mirror, ten years old and holding back tears because she was covered in rainbows and it was _ too many, too many, what was she supposed to do with so many_, made her suddenly want to break down for the first time in a long while. She remembered Behrad staring at her arms and face in awe, asking to touch them and giggling when she poked him in the side afterward, trying to distract him from all the colors decorating her skin because it wasn’t supposed to be fascinating, why on earth would anyone be fascinated by endless cuts and bruises across her body?

Ray’s expression softened and he scooted closer, not quite touching her, leaving an inch between them, a far cry from her earlier situation with his younger self. “It’s okay. If it makes you feel any better, I’m honored to be your first. Even if all you have are paper cuts.”

She laughed, and for the second time that day, wetness choked her, tightening the sound as it left her, and she knocked her shoulder against Ray’s with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, believe me, I’ve got _ plenty _ of marks from you elsewhere. Most of which I’m hoping are from missions with the Legends and not from your childhood with a baby alien, because that would be a _ little _ fucked up.”

Ray shook his head, but he was laughing too, relaxing as she wiped her eyes quickly, grateful when he said nothing of the way her vision blurred and a couple of tears streamed down her cheeks. “I wasn’t a clumsy kid, so they’re probably from missions, sorry. Like you said, not everything goes as planned when we’re time-traveling and saving the universe.”

“_Saving _ is a generous term for it,” she teased.

“I’m telling you, we’ve saved lots of time-related incidents! The whole timeline was rewritten and everything!”

“Uh huh. Sure.” She laughed again at the mock-offended look on his face and another thought occurred to her, causing her mirth to fade. “I - Uh. I’m sorry for snapping, by the way. At all of you.”

He didn’t need to ask about what. Ray smiled that sunny grin of his and waved a hand. “Hey, it’s okay. I mean, I’d definitely apologize because Jax was kind of annoyed about it and Sara was pretty angry, but it’s okay. Are you going to tell them about your marks?”

Zari’s heart slammed against her chest and she turned her face away. “I can’t exactly hide them all, even with makeup, so. I mean. They probably already can guess.”

“Do you think any of them are your soulmates too?”

Shit. Shit, shit, _ shit_, she hadn’t even _ thought _ about that.

And suddenly Zari felt like a _ massive _ idiot.

The burns on her arms, she realized with a hot, horrifying flash of clarity, ruby red and impossible to mask no matter how much foundation she lathered them with, matching the jagged slash - a broken bottle? Or maybe a knife? - across her collarbone. She’d watched Mick wander into the kitchen late one night in a wifebeater, eyeing her across the room as he dared her to say something about the burns.

The strange, dark brown bruise, large and angry on her knee that she’d heard Jax whisper about to Stein once, heard him murmur of how he missed football and how he still got aches and cramps when he moved his knee the wrong way.

The cuts on her forehead and a couple on her sides, burnt orange she sometimes mistook for tiny sunburns at a glance, that dotted Stein’s body in stark white, barely visible unless you were looking for them.

Nate’s split lip from a couple missions ago that hadn’t healed yet, glaring back at her in a silvery hue when she stared in the mirror.

A matching golden yellow scar on her bicep - _ same as Jax’s, it was the same, how had she not seen it _\- that was a rare color these days, some of the older scars long gone, though she wasn’t sure why.

Watching Amaya work out the other day and seeing sapphire blue wind its way up Zari’s arms, matching the numerous scars on Amaya’s arms and shoulders, and letting Amaya tell her about how she was in some superhero justice league back in the 1940’s, her voice quiet in the empty training room, save for her, Zari, and the punching bag Amaya had abandoned.

And the various splotches and streaks of gray scattered across Zari’s body, most on her back and sides: she remembered Sara walking into the training room too, hair high in a ponytail and smirking at Amaya when the latter teased her about sparring. She remembered being confused and a little impressed by the multitude of scars, some mismatching with a light pink that _ fuck, it matched the pink on Zari’s chest too, how had she not seen it, how - _

“Zari?” Ray had a hand on her shoulder and it took her a few seconds to register she had a hand of her own pressed over her mouth, her breath coming in and out, shallow and fast, eyes fixed on the floor. “Hey, are you okay? I need you to breathe, can you do that?”

“All of them,” she whispered into her hand, her gut plummeting through the bowels of the Waverider faster than the speed of light, and _ yes, now she might throw up for real_. “I’m - they’re _ all _ mine.”

“Can you breathe with me, you sound like you’re having a panic - ”

“They’re all my soulmates, Ray,” she said louder, lowering her hand and struggling to keep calm as no comprehension passed over his features. “The _ Legends_. All of you. You’re all my - ”

“We - oh.” He swallowed. “Oh, we’re - _ oh_. All of us?”

“And more.” Zari buried her face in her hands, hating how much she was shaking, but she couldn’t _ stop_. “All of you and _ more_, I don’t even know who but I’m sure there’s more, _ fuck_!”

“Z, look at me, it’s okay - ”

“Ray?” Shit, _ fuck_. Zari refused to look up, heard Ray make a nervous noise next to her as footsteps entered the room and stopped. “Zari? Are you both alright?”

“We’re… Uh…” Ray laughed, and really _ how _ was he more nervous about this than she was? _ He _ didn’t have fourteen soulmates and realize she’d been living with a ship _ full of them _ for a week or so without _ realizing it_. “Amaya, I think she’s having a panic attack, I don’t - ”

“Zari?” There was a rustling and a light pressure against her side and Zari almost jerked away, even though she knew it was only Amaya, Amaya wouldn’t hurt her. Amaya was her _ fucking soulmate. _ “What do you need?”

She raised her head a little from her hands, shutting her eyes as she forced herself to breathe. In and out. In and out. Slow and hopefully steady enough so Amaya would stop staring at her so hard, she could _ feel _ her gaze boring into the side of her face.

“Do you know what caused it?” Amaya asked, keeping her tone gentle. Zari wasn’t sure if she was talking to her or Ray or both of them, but a hysterical noise flew out of her before she could stop it.

“You’re all my soulmates. All this time. I can’t - _ all this damn time_.” Zari shook her head at the ceiling, a strange lightness tugging at her chest. “I don’t even know _ why_.”

“Why what?” Amaya didn’t sound as stunned as Ray had been. Maybe she’d seen some of the blue scars too, figured out the truth like Ray had.

“Why _ all of you_? I mean, _ one _ is supposed to be enough, and that’s for romantic partners and shit. But no, instead I get _ all _ of you and _ more_. What does - why - ” She glanced at Amaya, at the small curve of her smile, sad and still slightly confused in the face of Zari’s rambling. “_Why_?”

“I told you we had a connection because of the totems. Maybe the team is just a greater connection beyond that.” When Zari just stared at her, Amaya hesitantly reached forward and laid an arm across her shoulders. Zari was too numb to shake her off, aware of Ray shifting closer next to her. “A friend of mine back home, in the JSA… He had five scars. Five different soulmates. And a couple of them were within the JSA, but they weren’t together. Not as romantic partners, as you described it. But they were all close, and that was all that mattered. I didn’t entirely understand their connection at the time, but I don’t think I needed to. Things happen for a reason.” Amaya’s smile grew. “And sometimes they bring you together.”

“Fourteen seems excessive,” Zari muttered, partially to herself, a mantra that she’d hissed in the back of her mind for years. _ Too many, too much, excessive, unnecessary_.

“Well, maybe some of them are new Legends,” Ray said. “Or new friends.”

“I barely know you. Any of you.” Zari was grateful when they didn’t try and deny it, and she took a deep breath again, rubbing her face. “I don’t… I don’t have friends.”

Amaya squeezed her shoulders, just a little, enough to get Zari to look at her again as a gleam entered her eyes that she swore was determination. “You do now.”

“That’s - ” Zari snorted despite herself. “That’s not how friendship works.”

“Forget friendship then, and forget soulmates. You’re on this team for a reason. And not just so you can save your family.” Her face felt hot but Amaya didn’t let her look away, that gleam brightening as her features hardened for a moment. “You’re here because you’re a Legend too. None of us started out that way. Hell, I came onboard as a stowaway and tried to kill them due to some misplaced idea of revenge.”

Ray laughed. “Oh, right. I forgot about that.”

“My point is,” Amaya said, though her smile twitched when she glanced over Zari’s head at Ray, “whether or not we’re soulmates or you consider us friends, you’re part of this team. No matter how long you stay, we’re here for you. And that’s worth more than any mark.”

_ Forever friends_, younger Ray had exclaimed, eyes wide and overjoyed as he gazed up at her, and something about that phrase made her chest warm.

And maybe Amaya was right. Maybe that was okay.

She didn’t know how she was going to break the news to the other Legends, or if any of them returned her scars, or even how long she was going to wind up staying on this disaster of a ship (no offense to Gideon and the Waverider itself).

Still, Zari Tomaz looked down at her scars, scattered in varying sizes and hues across her skin, and for the first time since she was ten, she felt nothing but relief.

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream with me on my DCTV Tumblr @areyouscarletcold. Comments are always appreciated, and have a great day!


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